Car Makers - Worst Manufacturers of MY 1997

The Car Manufacturers with the Least Reliable and Durable Cars of Model Year 1997 by CR's 2003 List of Used Cars to Avoid

This page lists the worst car manufacturers of model year 1997 by two measures, both of which employ Consumer Reports' list of Used Cars to Avoid. Both measures use the 1997 models on the 2003 list of Cars to Avoid, when the 1997 cars were about 5 ½ years old.

General Motors Corporation, with debts far exceeding assets and declining sales, filed a bankruptcy petition in 2009 and changed its name to Motors Liquidation Company. A newly incorporated and U.S.-financed company took the name General Motors Corporation and acquired many of the assets, including the old manufacturing plants, as well as many of the employees, of Motors Liquidation Company, now mainly a shell.

The following bar graph depicts each car company's share of the 1997 Used Cars to Avoid in 2003 at an approximate age of 5 ½ years.

Note that Ford Motor Company's share of the worst is very small by comparison to General Motors'.

1997's Worst Car Manufacturers by Number of Manufacturer's 1997 Cars to Avoid Divided by All of Its 1997 Cars Rated in 2003

For this quality measure, we divide the car maker's number of 1997 models on CR's 2003 list of Used Cars to Avoid by the number of its 1997 models rated in Consumer Reports' April 2003 Reliability Tables. This computation is done with the intent to garner a rough estimate as to how likely a brand's models will be among the Cars to Avoid at about 5 ½ years.

The 8 worst 1997 car manufacturers by this quality measure are, in descending order (worst first):

Volkswagen AG, with a quotient value of 1.50 based on 2 rated models

Chrysler Corproation, with a quotient value of 1.05 based on 21 rated models

Isuzu Motors Ltd (then a General Motors' affiliate), with a quotient value of 1.00 based on 1 rated model

General Motors Corporation, with a quotient value of 0.95 based on 37 rated models

Volvo Personvagnar AB, with a quotient value of 0.50 based on 2 rated models

Mazda Motor Corporation, with a quotient value of 0.25 based on 4 rated models

Ford Motor Company, with a quotient value of 0.20 based on 25 rated models

Honda Motor Company, with a quotient value of 0.14 based on 7 rated models

All of the car company quotients for model year 1997 are depicted in the following bar graph.

From the chart, we see that Ford Motor Company's fraction of the worst is very small compared to General Motors', but General Motors' and Chrysler's are very similar.

Honda Motor Company made 1997's list of worst companies due to its marketing of the Passport, a rebadged sport-utility vehicle by Isuzu Motors Ltd, then an affiliate of General Motors Corporation.

The Prizm, a rebadge of the Corolla, is not included in the above computations.